Post Traumatic Growth
In June 2023. I will be having my first solo art show at The Harrison Center for the Arts in the Underground Gallery. The works I’ll be displaying were created during the last couple of years as I was healing from an intense medical situation. The title of my show is called “Post Traumatic Growth”.
Warning: Medical PTSD
I was sick for 12 years before this happened to me; I’d been navigating the broken medical system for well over a decade and I was no stranger to misdiagnosis and neglect. Anytime someone is shuffled through a system that has the power to disregard your very humanity and make you feel like an unimportant number/cog in a dysfunctional machine, it can be easy to start to question your worth (and I say this as a cis white woman- people of color, especially women, have an inordinately more difficult time within this, and many other systems). I was conditioned to keep my mouth shut and believe what I was told. I fought it at first, but after so many years of this treatment, I’d lost hope; I learned to keep my head down and just accept the dysfunction.
I had my gallbladder removed in 2020 and I knew almost immediately that something was wrong. When I sought help, my surgeon, his resident, and my family doctor all tried to convince me over and over and over again that I was just fine for the next 18 days. I’d never experienced this level of pain in my entire life (and I am no stranger to pain). After the third attempt to acquire appropriate care, I came home from the hospital, opened my computer, and printed off a Living Will and a Power of Attorney. I knew I was dying.
I will spare you the details of the next 18 days, because those were the most traumatizing parts of the whole experience and honestly, it’s still hard to talk about. Things happened that I still haven’t told anyone. And that’s the crazy thing about trauma. I know there are risks and complications with any surgery. It wasn’t that a mistake happened in the initial surgery. It was that the mistake was denied, possibly covered up, and that I wasn't believed about the amount of pain I was experiencing.
If my sisters hadn’t found me on the 18th day and insisted on taking me back to the hospital, I very likely would have died in my apartment. By the time we found out I had sepsis, none of us were sure if I was going to make it. My heart and my kidneys had begun acting abnormally, and the doctors and nurses just kept saying “they didn’t know what was going on”.
It turns out that I had a bile leak after they removed my gallbladder. It had been leaking into my abdominal cavity for 18 days, causing a massive infection. When they finally “discovered” it, they went in to fix it, but ended up doing more damage. When they told me what they’d done, and that now they’d have to open me up to fix that, I shed my first tear in 18 days. Because this happened in the early months of the pandemic and visitors were strictly limited so I was navigating the majority of this all alone in the hospital.
After the doctor who further injured me left my room, the nurse came over to me and whispered something that I’ll never forget. He said, “This hospital is not a prison, and these doctors aren’t wardens- if you want to go somewhere else, you have every right to do that.” He then gave me a little wink. I felt like it was his way of witnessing me, letting me know that I wasn’t crazy for crying, and that I had options. I called my family, talked it over with them, and decided to transfer to a different hospital in the middle of the night. I called my son, 250 miles away, and told him it might be a good idea for him to get to St. Louis in the morning.
I’ve had several surgeries in my life. I never wanted my son to be at the hospital with me for a few reasons. One, he was young when I first got sick, and I didn’t ever want to worry him. As he got older, I never wanted him to feel responsible for taking care of me. I was adamant about not putting him in a “caretaker” role. But things did not go as planned with the gallbladder removal and I was scared that I may not see him again. Right before the final surgeries to fix all of the damage, my family sent me a pic of all of them and my son- he’d made it to St. Louis just in time. And even though I couldn’t see any of them in person, it made me feel relieved to know they were all together.
I had an excellent surgical and nursing team at the second hospital where they opened me up to repair all of the damage done by the first hospital. After several weeks of physical therapy, when I was well enough to finally be able to paint again, I realized how much art was helping me to deal with the things that happened- things I didn’t have words for. As my body healed, my mind healed as well. Though I still have ongoing complications and the occasional flashback, I know I can lean on art to bring me through it again and again.
I feel frustrated when I have a setback. But as one of my favorite surgeons from the second hospital said, “Try not to think of it as a setback; think of it as part of your growth.” He reminded me that growth is not linear. Part of my growth process has been accepting these “down times”. With my autoimmune disease, I often feel like I’m already at such a deficit, so when my health takes an even bigger dip, it’s hard to be positive and upbeat when it feels like I’m losing even more time and function. Allowing myself to feel the frustration and being okay with resting is an ongoing process for me. Learning to rest does not seem to equal growth in a capitalistic society, but I think it’s imperative, even for healthy people.
Life is stressful, and trauma happens. Painting helps me heal and cope and it reminds me of what we are capable of when we are seen, valued, loved, and cared for. Art also uplifts me when I am sometimes unable to have some of those needs met. This art show reminds me that there is beauty to be found, work to be done, rest to be had, and that it can all coexist. Growth is possible.
End note: I had two completely different experiences at the two different hospitals. I can’t account for why. I can only thank my lucky stars that the second place had it way more together than the first. The access to health care in this country and the systemic breakdown of communication within corporatized medicine is heartbreaking. Even more so if you fall into a marginalized category.
When I first got sick, I was almost immediately bankrupted and have lived under the poverty line ever since. So many people are one paycheck away from homelessness or one accident/illness away from disability. I hear stories similar to mine all too often and it absolutely breaks my heart. The long term damage of the stress involved in managing chronic conditions is enough to keep you tethered to the very dysfunctional system that contributed to it in the first place. I’m glad that I have learned all sorts of different coping skills along the way, and I hope that by sharing my story, it will encourage others to advocate fiercely for themselves, and at the very least make them feel less alone.